the unmistakable pronunciations of rural Norfolk from my visits there. Carter’s voice, with its clipped consonants and drawling upper-class vowels, sounded fake. Practised yet unnatural, it had an actorish ring, retaining no trace of his native county that I could hear.
‘Whereabouts in Norfolk?’ I asked.
‘Swaf-something? Swath-something? I forget.’
‘Swaffham? It’s a little town. Some cousins of my father’s live near there.’
‘Then you should tell Mr Carter – he’ll like that. But I don’t think he goes back there very often. He came to work in Egypt when he was seventeen. He didn’t have a degree or anything – not like Mr Lythgoe who lectured at Harvard or Mr Mace, our conservationist, who studied at Oxford – or Daddy, who is so brainy and has degrees from Harvard and Leipzig.’ She frowned. ‘He never talks about it, but I reckon Mr Carter scarcely went to school. He could paint well, though – his father taught him. So someone pulled strings and he was given a job in Egypt, copying tomb paintings… He’d never left home, and he’d had very little training, but within a few months he was digging at el-Amarna with the great Flinders Petrie, imagine that! He worked for a while as an inspector for the Department of Antiquities – they control archaeology in Egypt – and he’s been here ever since. Well, he leaves in the summer, we all do – you can’t stay in Egypt then, not when it’s one hundred and forty degrees, and you certainly can’t dig. But he has a house in the desert that’s known as “Castle Carter”, so his home is here. At least, that’s what he says.’
My interest grew: a man who’d escaped schooling? A castle in the desert? Frances was so much better informed than I: I didn’t know where el-Amarna was or what it signified; I’d never heard of Flinders Petrie. Something about Howard Carter fascinated me – perhaps the fact that I could not decide which aspects of him were genuine, and which fakery or pretence. He had a piratical air, though he disguised it beneath a Homburg hat and gentlemanly, well-cut suits. He had a natty, substantial moustache, large white teeth that flashed in a threatening way when he smiled, a long chin, and sleek hair; he seemed given to mischievous satiric flourishes, raising his hat with great zeal to female guests, for instance, as they crossed paths in the lobby.
‘Good morning, my dear lady,’ I once heard him say to a bewildered English visitor who had recently arrived, and who – to judge from her perplexed expression – had not the least idea who he was. And then, on another occasion: ‘Frau von Essen! Guten Morgen, gnädige Frau … and still in occupation, I see. Is Berlin not calling to you?’
This remark – made at a time when the Great War was fresh in everyone’s memories and when Germans experienced prejudice in British-ruled Egypt – might have been a barb, or mere politesse. Haughty Frau von Essen bridled and gave him a cold stare, to which he responded by baring his teeth in that alarming grin, clicking his heels, and sauntering out of the lobby whistling.
Over the next few days, I became something of a Howard Carter sleuth; I found myself looking out for him and, more often than not, I’d be rewarded. I’d see him strolling across the Ezbekieh Gardens, carrying a silver-topped cane, the professional beggars giving him, I noticed, a wide berth. Or he’d be taking tea on the terrace at Shepheard’s, sometimes in the company of Lord Carnarvon’s daughter, Lady Evelyn – the elegant young woman I’d glimpsed at Madame’s dancing class; more often in the company of the rich older women who were its habitués, and with whom he seemed a great favourite: they were always gushing compliments, hanging on his every word.
‘So I shinned down the rope to the cave,’ I overheard him say one afternoon, ‘a two-hundred-foot drop below. It was the middle of the night and pitch dark, but I caught the thieves
‘Whereabouts in Norfolk?’ I asked.
‘Swaf-something? Swath-something? I forget.’
‘Swaffham? It’s a little town. Some cousins of my father’s live near there.’
‘Then you should tell Mr Carter – he’ll like that. But I don’t think he goes back there very often. He came to work in Egypt when he was seventeen. He didn’t have a degree or anything – not like Mr Lythgoe who lectured at Harvard or Mr Mace, our conservationist, who studied at Oxford – or Daddy, who is so brainy and has degrees from Harvard and Leipzig.’ She frowned. ‘He never talks about it, but I reckon Mr Carter scarcely went to school. He could paint well, though – his father taught him. So someone pulled strings and he was given a job in Egypt, copying tomb paintings… He’d never left home, and he’d had very little training, but within a few months he was digging at el-Amarna with the great Flinders Petrie, imagine that! He worked for a while as an inspector for the Department of Antiquities – they control archaeology in Egypt – and he’s been here ever since. Well, he leaves in the summer, we all do – you can’t stay in Egypt then, not when it’s one hundred and forty degrees, and you certainly can’t dig. But he has a house in the desert that’s known as “Castle Carter”, so his home is here. At least, that’s what he says.’
My interest grew: a man who’d escaped schooling? A castle in the desert? Frances was so much better informed than I: I didn’t know where el-Amarna was or what it signified; I’d never heard of Flinders Petrie. Something about Howard Carter fascinated me – perhaps the fact that I could not decide which aspects of him were genuine, and which fakery or pretence. He had a piratical air, though he disguised it beneath a Homburg hat and gentlemanly, well-cut suits. He had a natty, substantial moustache, large white teeth that flashed in a threatening way when he smiled, a long chin, and sleek hair; he seemed given to mischievous satiric flourishes, raising his hat with great zeal to female guests, for instance, as they crossed paths in the lobby.
‘Good morning, my dear lady,’ I once heard him say to a bewildered English visitor who had recently arrived, and who – to judge from her perplexed expression – had not the least idea who he was. And then, on another occasion: ‘Frau von Essen! Guten Morgen, gnädige Frau … and still in occupation, I see. Is Berlin not calling to you?’
This remark – made at a time when the Great War was fresh in everyone’s memories and when Germans experienced prejudice in British-ruled Egypt – might have been a barb, or mere politesse. Haughty Frau von Essen bridled and gave him a cold stare, to which he responded by baring his teeth in that alarming grin, clicking his heels, and sauntering out of the lobby whistling.
Over the next few days, I became something of a Howard Carter sleuth; I found myself looking out for him and, more often than not, I’d be rewarded. I’d see him strolling across the Ezbekieh Gardens, carrying a silver-topped cane, the professional beggars giving him, I noticed, a wide berth. Or he’d be taking tea on the terrace at Shepheard’s, sometimes in the company of Lord Carnarvon’s daughter, Lady Evelyn – the elegant young woman I’d glimpsed at Madame’s dancing class; more often in the company of the rich older women who were its habitués, and with whom he seemed a great favourite: they were always gushing compliments, hanging on his every word.
‘So I shinned down the rope to the cave,’ I overheard him say one afternoon, ‘a two-hundred-foot drop below. It was the middle of the night and pitch dark, but I caught the thieves
Similar Books
